Like a selfish and impudent teenager who detests his elderly mother since he sees her as an embarrassment – a lingering evidence of his one-time dependency – who wishes her a speedy demise and is even tempted to assist in the process, Europe has rejected its Christian patrimony.
When lovingly asked to give even mere acknowledgment of the fact that the mother has at least co-operated in bringing the child to birth, the teen obstinately refuses, despite repeated entreaties.
A spanking for Europe is in order. Pope John Paul II repeatedly, and almost embarrassingly, pleaded with the European Union to acknowledge its Christian roots in its new Constitution.
The call came from the Pope himself, from his ambassadors, from the world’s bishops, and from faithful around the world. However, the powerful framers of the Constitution remained unmoved and rejected any acknowledgment of Christianity when 25 European leaders gathered in Rome for the Oct. 29 signing of the Constitution.
The battle over the exclusion of Christianity from the Constitution sets the backdrop for another rude awakening to the anti-Christian sentiment alive and growing among current-day European elites. The European Union’s rejection of a renowned Italian politician, simply and explicitly because he held firmly to the Catholic faith, has demonstrated to the world that the rulers of Europe are anti-Christian bigots. While they will not tolerate discrimination against Muslims, Jews, Buddhists, or Satanists for that matter, Christians – at least those who put their faith into practice – are open targets.
Italian Foreign Minister Rocco Buttiglione was nominated to the post of European commissioner for justice, freedom and security by incoming European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso. Buttiglione was named along with 24 other new commissioners in August.
During confirmation hearings in October, Buttiglione, a Catholic professor and personal friend of Pope John Paul II, was badgered about his stand on moral issues. In response to such questioning, Buttiglione said, “Many things may be considered immoral which should not be prohibited … I may think that homosexuality is a sin. This has no effect on politics, unless I say that homosexuality is a crime.” The committee voted narrowly to reject Buttiglione. But in order to do so, it had to reject the whole slate of nominees, since the nominees must be accepted or rejected as a block.
Initially, Barroso decided not to cave in to the pressure by socialists. He had his mind set to put his block of nominees up for a vote before the whole 731-member EU Parliament. Italy, too, decided to stick with its candidate. However, a 200-strong socialist group among the parliamentarians staged an anti-Buttiglione campaign and, with support of communists, leftists and Greens, were able to apply enough pressure to force Buttiglione to resign.
The ordeal was felt throughout Europe and was enough to bring normally diplomatic Vatican higher-ups to use plain language to inform the public of the dangerous step that had been taken. Cardinal Renato Martino, head of the Vatican’s Council for Justice and Peace, spoke of the Buttiglione ouster, saying, “It looks like a new Inquisition.” Martino, the former Vatican representative at the United Nations, said he saw in the European Parliament a “new anti-Catholicism” in which “you can freely insult Catholics and nobody will tell you anything.”
The Buttiglione affair will go down in modern history as one of the most public acts of anti-Christian discrimination. However, it will also mark a turning point in Christian ecumenism.
So, too, the attack on Buttiglione has garnered supportive comment for the Roman church from the Greek Orthodox Church, a 1,000-year rival of the Roman Catholic Church.
The head of the Greek Orthodox Church, Orthodox Archbishop of Athens and all of Greece, Christodoulos Paraskevaides, called Buttiglione “a good Christian” and defended his statements on homosexuality. “Think how low humanity has sunk,” he said. “It seeks to support a blatant, crying sin and keep us quiet to placate those who have the failing, who want everyone else to accept it as a normal condition.”
Another positive development is that Buttiglione’s rejection by the EU has prompted him to launch a new movement for Christian freedom. “What I am thinking of is a group to battle for the freedom of Christians, which is the freedom of everyone. A group to fight against the kind of creeping totalitarianism which has emerged recently regarding my personal situation,” he told the press.
What Billy Graham’s wife once said of the U.S. can truly be said today of modern Europe: “If God does not judge America soon, he’ll have to apologize to Sodom and Gomorrah.”
John-Henry Westen is the editor of LifeSiteNews.com.
